Greater New Orleans

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and his wife, Seletha, left, walk out of federal court on Poydras Street after being found guilt on 20-21 counts of corruption Wednesday Feb. 12, 2014. (Photo by David Grunfeld, Nola.com |The Times-Picayune)

Wednesday was a very good day at U.S. District Court in New Orleans for those who favor good government in Louisiana. Or maybe simply for justice.

Either way, when a former mayor of New Orleans gets convicted on 20 of 21 corruption counts in one federal courtroom, and a crooked coroner is sentenced to two years in another, it at least means the bad guys don't always get away with it.

Who knows what Ray Nagin, New Orleans' mayor during its darkest hour of Katrina, will be sentenced to? He faces up to 20 years in prison, and I'm hard pressed to come up with many reasons he should get much less. Do you agree?

Meanwhile, disgraced former St. Tammany coroner Peter Galvan, who managed to make himself the highest paid official in the state and sweeten his pension pot while also raking in undeserved sick pay and other goodies, got off with a 2-year sentence when he could have gotten five. I think Galvan got off easy, do you?

It's time for a wide-open chat about these crooks, and we might as well do so starting around 12 noon Thursday. This will be immeasurably improved by the presence from time to time of the NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune writers who know the most about each case and who have agreed to participate Thursday.

At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, I believe it's easy for the public to get too hopeful at times like this. In other words, in my opinion it would be a false hope to see this rare double-whammy to the political class as a game changer, or a watershed moment in which our elected miscreants begin to change their ways.

So are there any larger lessons to be learned here? Or is this but another sorry chapter in Louisiana's sordid political history, albeit a rather juicy one?

Of course, it was a good day, so if anyone simply wants to crow or rejoice they are of course welcome to do so. But if anyone has any broader or more specific questions about the crimes, the trials, the deals, the sentences - the whole panoply of legal ramifications for Nagin and Galvan - drop them in the comment stream below.